


Chosen by Destiny

by Silex



Category: Original Work
Genre: Doomsday Cults, Eldritch Horrors, Gen, Humor, Mysterious Agencies, Opossums, These tags read like something off the back of a book published by Angry Robot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 14:59:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15776433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: The Agency assigned her to this job, and now Agent Melissa Chowdhury has no choice but to see it through to the end. After all, she's the only one who the Chosen One trusts and only a Hero Chosen by Destiny can stop the Cult of the Conqueror Worm from unleashing an unspeakable evil into the world.





	Chosen by Destiny

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosencrantz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosencrantz/gifts).



> I'm so glad that someone asked for this prompt. I tired to include all the requested elements. Hopefully I was successful.

Agent Melissa Chowdhury crept cautiously around the side of the warehouse, alert for any indication that she’d been noticed.

Pater Eventide’s Cult of the Conqueror Worm was a small one, and far from the most competent group of individuals, but when dealing with the worshipers of elder gods, things beyond reality and other such entities it was always best to err on the side of caution.

That was why the Agency had sent her in, because she was the mentor to a destined hero, the only one who could stop them from summoning the thing they worshipped into the world. Fortunately, this wasn’t one of those situations where a mentor figure needed to die to motivate the hosen hero, it was more of a case that someone had to bring them to the site of the ritual.

The Agency had been scouting the site for weeks, watching the comings and goings of the cultists and had determined that there had been an increase in activity around the warehouse lining up with the waxing Worm Moon. It was odd, usually in her experience rituals like this were typically done during the waning moon, during the colder months when days were shorter and the forces of darkness were more powerful, but the cultists she was dealing with weren’t the brightest bunch, so it fit.

Still, even a partial success, allowing the Worm to brush against the boundary between worlds, would be enough to weaken the barrier and allow for easier passage for more dangerous things with smarter followers. It was best to nip something like this in the bud.

According to the team that had been casing the place there were roughly two dozen cultists that were regulars, more for larger meetings, and this was bound to be one of the larger ones. She’d counted twenty cars parked around the building, and assuming that they cultists carpooled she was badly outnumbered, even if she wasn’t alone. Of course if a fight started it was likely that most of them would fell. Cults like this typically had a small core of true believers and a bunch of hangers-on who had no idea what they were getting into.

She was accompanying the hero, chosen by destiny to defeat Pater Eventide, on this mission. It wasn’t every day that a field agent like her got such an honor, but then again she was the one who had been sent to find this particular chosen hero and then, for lack of anyone else willing, ended up training them.

As though aware that they were being thought of the occupant of the cat carrier Agent Chowdhury was carrying let out a snuffling, sneezing noise.

“Easy Miss Prissy,” Agent Chowdhury sighed.

In response the opossum sneezed again and began gnawing at the bars across the front of the carrier.

She should have seen it coming when she’d first gotten the assignment to find the latest chosen one. The coordinates had been sent to her phone and she’d followed them, back to the Agency of all places. Specifically to a dumpster in an alleyway behind the Agency.

Chosen heroes had come from humble beginnings in the past, so she wasn’t ready to start worrying. It was quite possible for the hero she was looking for to be homeless and hungry. The number of homeless veterans out there, or wandering psychics mistakenly viewed as being mentally ill, meant that the local homeless population was fertile ground for individuals with the abilities needed to save the world from the unknown and unknowable things that lurked past the edges of reality.

In this case her optimism proved unfounded.

There had been a opossum in the dumpster, a large, dirty, foul tempered opossum. It hissed at her and then went back to eating the piece of pizza that it had found.

She’d called back, asked for the coordinates to be resent.

Same place, same dumpster.

Just to be sure she called up Castor, the dowser who’d sent her the assignment, to speak to him in person. He’d confirmed what she’d hoped wasn’t the case, that she was in the exact right spot.

When she suggested that his rod might be a bit bent he’d informed her that he was map dowsing with a plumb bob for better accuracy since time was of the essence.

She’d hung up on him and gone to fetch a pair of thick, leather gloves, all the while considering what Castor could do with his plumb bob if this turned out to be a joke.

It hadn’t been a joke and since she’d been the one to get the opossum she’d ended up tasked with training it in whatever skills a opossum would need to defeat a cult.

After some pressure she agreed and promptly named the ugly, hissing thing Miss Pissy. Her superiors hadn’t been amused and the opossum went on record as Agent Didelphis. She still called it Miss Pissy, at least until it finally figured out that she wasn’t going to hurt it and that she was the one feeding it.

When it started warming up to her and acting less pissy it had become Miss Prissy because it wasn’t worth risking an official reprimand over something that looked and acted like a cross between an ill-tempered cat and a good sized sewer rat with mange.

Miss Prissy let out another sneeze, the noise it made when it wanted food, then went back to gnawing on the bars.

“I’ll let you out soon enough,” Agent Chowdhury spoke in what she hoped were calming tones. The thing was mostly leash trained, but for something like this it couldn’t be trusted out and about, even on a leash.

In response Miss Prissy grabbed the bars with surprisingly dexterous hands and rattled them.

A flashlight beam swept through the darkness nearby and Agent Chowdhury ducked back around the corner and hid behind several overflowing trash cans.

“Quiet!” She hissed, hoping that the opossum would listen for once.

Miss Prissy sneezed and huffed, continuing to paw at the door of the cat carrier. Turning herself upside down she began to kick at the top with her hind paws.

“I’m telling you, I heard something,” a voice came from around the corner.

“You’re just upset that we’re stuck out here instead of getting to join the ritual,” a second cultist griped, “You’ve been complaining all night and now you’re hearing things.”

“I’m not making excuses,” the first cultist snapped back, “But if this is something we need to tell the Pater about this.”

Agent Chowdhury swore under her breath. There were two of them. Under normal circumstances she could have dealt with them easily, but because Miss Prissy hated guns and the opossum was the chosen one, she’d been sent in unarmed.

Because the chosen one had to be the one to stop the ritual and if Miss Prissy decided to spend the next hour playing opossum she wouldn’t be able to.

Fighting the cultists unarmed might not be too hard, assuming that they were untrained and had no experience fighting, but it would be impossible to do so quietly.

Letting out a frustrated hiss Miss Prissy dropped to the bottom of the cage, wheezed and then threw herself at the front of the carrier causing something to click and the door to swing open.

The opossum tumbled out and with much snorting and wheezing, trundled around the corner, beady little eyes squinting in the flashlight beam.

Deciding that it didn’t like the light it turned tail and ran into one of the trash cans.

“Shit! What was that?” the flashlight swung wildly back and forth, “It looked like a giant rat! Do rats get that big? Was it a familiar? A sign?”

“It was just a opossum,” the second cultist sighed, “That’s what you heard.”

The light swung away and the pair of cultists continued on their patrol.

Agent Chowdhury let out a sigh of her own and then went to see about retrieving Miss Prissy.

Grabbing it by its hairless tail she pulled it out of the garbage.

Rather than hissing at the indignity of such treatment, the opossum clutched the treasure it had found, a half-eaten tuna fish sandwich, to its chest.

Briefly debating whether to try and relieve Miss Prissy of the reeking meal it had found for itself, Agent Chowdhury decided against it and dropped the opossum into the carrier, sandwich and all.

At least that might work to keep it quiet.

It did too.

Once the patrolling cultists were safely out of hearing range Agent Chowdhury found an unlocked side door and entered the warehouse.

Luck was with her and the area she entered was curtained off, hidden from the view of the assembled cultists.

They were chanting, badly out of synch, as Pater Eventide tried to lead them. Of course the Worm didn’t care about how the chanting sounded, just that the words were said correctly and by enough people to wear reality thin enough for it to break through. It was the belief in the power of the words more than anything else that did the damage. That and the offering.

Lifting the curtain slightly Agent Chowdhury discovered that she had entered right behind the altar where Pater Eventide was leading the ritual. There she had to give Eventide credit, his followers may have been incompetent, but the man knew how to set up an altar, even if it was just a folding table covered in burlap. It was piled high with black dirt, soaked with something foul smelling and sticky looking, piled high to help hold up a unfired clay sculpture of a segmented worm, coiled in an intricate pattern. The sculpture was coated in the same foul substance that soaked the dirt, and all around it black candles flickered, and cloying incense smoke swirled around it, the smoke coiling and writhing like worms.

A very impressive work of sympathetic magic if there ever was one, she even got a glimpse of shining metal in front of the sculpture, a knife sticking blade first out of the dirt, to pierce reality no doubt.

Simple and direct.

She could appreciate that.

There was only one small problem. The runed circle around the altar had been drawn backwards.

Normally things like that didn’t matter, but that coupled with the direction the knife was pointing gave the ritual directionality.

Which left the question of where the weak spot in reality would manifest.

It was something she wanted to avoid if possible. The last thing she needed was to be snatched by some otherworldly pseudopod and dragged into another dimension.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have to bother trying to figure it out. A thin black line appeared wavering between Pater Eventide and the assembled cultists.

“Tremble!” The cult leader proclaimed, raising his hands high, “The Conqueror Worm is at hand. All things will be laid low and –”

Miss Prissy Growled. There was no way Pater Eventide could have heard, but he stopped and turned around.

“An interloper seeks to stop us?” The cult leader threw back his head and laughed, “Now? When the door has already been opened?”

Any semblance of planning forgotten, Agent Chowdhury rushed him.

He was only about twenty feet away, but there was the altar between them and carrying Miss Prissy’s carrier was awkward.

Eyes narrowing suspiciously Pater Eventide grabbed the knife out of the dirt.

Great, a knife fight was about to start and she’d brought a opossum to it.

Except he didn’t rush to meet her, instead he turned to the black line in the air and began to slash at it with the knife, cutting away ragged chunks of the fabric of reality, revealing a swirling blackness beyond. Something impossibly large moved on the other side of the hole, extending slime dripping tentacles, segmented and writhing like worms, to pull at the edges of the tear.

There was only one thing to do.

Sometimes it was necessary for a hero to take risks for the sake of humanity.

Opening the carrier Agent Chowdhury grabbed Miss Prissy and threw her at the cult leader as hard as she could.

The opossum hit him squarely between the shoulders and held tight, even as Pater Eventide stumbled forward, towards the tear.

Hissing angrily at such treatment, Miss Prissy attacked the closest target at hand, the back of the cult leader’s head.

Screaming, he grabbed at the opossum, who responded by turning its attention to his hand. Sinking its sharp little teeth into his thumb, it let go of his head to latch onto his arm with all four paws.

Cultists were panicking, some rushing to aid their leader, others fleeing.

More tentacles were reaching out of the hole that cult leader had made, these ones tipped with circles of teeth. Most of the cultists who had come forward backed away at the sight while a few, more devoted than the rest pressed on to assist their leader.

Then a tentacle managed to grab one of them and pull them, kicking and screaming, though the hole.

A moment’s hesitation, then the remaining cultists fled, leaving the fight between her, Pater Eventide and the opossum.

Spitting furiously, Miss Prissy held on and continued her attack as Pater Eventide flailed wildly in an attempt to dislodge her, twirling and stumbling on his own robes until he got too close to one of the tentacles.

Like a snake it struck, wrapping around his waist. The others joined, grabbing his arms and legs, pulling him and Miss Prissy through the hole.

“No!” The cult leader howled, “This wasn’t supposed to happen! You were supposed to reward me! Make me your first servant most high, not…Are those mouths? No! Noooooo!”

Shaking her head Agent Chowdhury pushed the Worm sculpture off the table.

Why did the idiots always think that when they were serving a mindless hunger from beyond reality that they would be rewarded in any way other than being the first eaten?

The clay of the sculpture wasn’t even hard and when it hit the ground it did so with a satisfying splat.

Avoiding several tentacles that had come back through the hole, which with nothing to anchor it on this side, was already starting to shrink, Agent Chowdhury kicked one of the table’s legs, causing it to fall over and dirt to obscure the runes on the floor.

Pater Eventide’s screaming cut off abruptly, a rumbling like thunder taking its place.

The sound grew louder and louder, even as reality continued to mend itself, forcing Agent Chowdhury to cover her ears.

Slime poured from the shrinking tear, tentacles twitched wildly and doubled back on themselves as the massive thing on the other side surged forward. Dozens of tentacles spasmed and then fell to the ground, severed at the hole sealed itself.

They continued to move for several seconds before crumbling to dirt and revealing a small, greasy furred thing.

Miss Prissy.

The opossum lay still, covered in slime and dirt.

Ignoring the panicking cultists Agent Chowdhury cautiously stepped forward and prodded Miss Prissy with the tip of her shoe.

No response.

Well, it had been expected. Miss Prissy had made the ultimate sacrifice to save the world. The least Agent Chowdhury could do was see to it that it got a proper burial and that Agent Didelphis was recorded as having died in the field, giving her life for the sake of the mission. Not a bad way for an agent to go, but Agent Chowdhury had to admit she felt a little bad about it.

Now that it was gone Agent Chowdhury could admit that she’d gotten a little attached to the thing.

All that was left to do was call in that the Conqueror Worm had been stopped, Pater Eventide was no longer a threat and the cult was as good as disbanded.

Taking out her cellphone Agent Chowdhury punched in the number only to stop at the sound of an irritated wheeze.

Shaking itself Miss Prissy rolled over and began to walk back to the cat carrier.

Agent Chowdhury followed the growling, sneezing animal, watching as it padded into the carrier, growled some more and pulled out the remains of the tuna fish sandwich began to eat.

The whole time it kept its black eyes fixed on her, as though daring her to try and interrupt its meal again.


End file.
